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内容：Alice Ge 编辑：Blair Lin
Wechat ID: NativeStudy / Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471
Part I: Speaker
Babies Want Fair Leaders By Christine Herman on July 31, 2019
Source: Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/babies-want-fair-leaders/ [Rephrase 1, 02:56]
Part II: Speed
Giving cats food with an antibody may help people with cat allergies
BY ERIKA ENGELHAUPT 9:00AM, JULY 26, 2019
[Time 2]
Cat lovers who sneeze and sniffle around their feline friends might one day find at least partial relief in a can of cat food.
New research suggests that feeding cats an antibody to the major allergy-causing protein in cats renders some of the protein, called Fel d1, unrecognizable to the human immune system, reducing an allergic response. After 105 cats were fed the antibody for 10 weeks, the amount of active Fel d1 protein on the cats’ hair dropped by 47 percent on average, researchers from pet food–maker Nestlé Purina report in the June Immunity, Inflammation and Disease.
And in a small pilot study, 11 people allergic to cats experienced substantially reduced nasal symptoms and less itchy, scratchy eyes when exposed in a test chamber to hair from cats fed the antibody diet, compared with cats fed a control diet. The preliminary findings were presented in Lisbon, Portugal at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Congress in June.
The Fel d1 protein is produced in cats’ salivary and sebaceous glands. Cats transfer the protein to their hair when they groom by licking themselves and excrete it in their urine. Humans are then exposed to it on cat hair and dander — dead skin — or in the litter box. Cat allergies plague up to 20 percent of people, and Fel d1 is responsible for 95 percent of allergic reactions to cats.
[232 words]
[Time 3]
Doctors can’t give humans antibodies orally because the molecules are broken down in the gut and never reach their targets, says Michael Blaiss, executive medical director of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and an allergist and immunologist at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. So Purina’s approach to the cat allergy problem is interesting and unusual, he says.
In cats, the antibody to Fel d1 — which is derived from eggs and added to cat food — has its effect in the mouth, neutralizing the protein in saliva, says Ebenezer Satyaraj, director of molecular nutrition at Purina. This way, the antibody disables Fel d1 “after its production by the cat, but before it spreads to the cat’s hair and dander — and before a response occurs in an individual sensitized to cat allergens,” says Satyaraj, who is leading the cat allergen research.
Since the role of Fel d1 in cat physiology is unknown, this approach doesn’t interfere with the normal production of Fel d1 by the cat, Satyaraj says. So far, he adds, safety tests have found no harm to cats fed the antibody.
Blaiss expects that the new treatment may help people with mild cat allergies. But those with severe symptoms are unlikely to find relief from cutting the amount of active allergen only in half. Some people can’t tolerate any amount of the protein without symptoms, he says. What’s more, different cats can produce wildly varying amounts of Fel d1 naturally. “So it just depends on the [Fel d1] levels of the cat and the symptomology of the patient,” he says.
In addition, Fel d1 is known to be a “sticky” protein, Blaiss says. It tends to stick around and accumulate in the home over time. So even with feeding a cat the antibody-laced food, “it could just take more time to build to a level that triggers an allergic reaction.”
Purina is not yet offering products containing the antibody, Satyaraj says, but plans further research to determine its effectiveness for reducing cat allergens in the home.
[341 words]
Source: Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/giving-cats-food-antibody-may-help-people-cat-allergies?tgt=nr
Monkeys can use basic logic to decipher the order of items in a list
BY BRUCE BOWER 2:03PM, JULY 31, 2019
[Time 4]
Monkeys can keep strings of information in order by using a simple kind of logical thought.
Rhesus macaque monkeys learned the order of items in a list with repeated exposure to pairs of items plucked from the list, say psychologist Greg Jensen of Columbia University and colleagues. The animals drew basic logical conclusions about pairs of listed items, akin to assuming that if A comes before B and B comes before C, then A comes before C, the scientists conclude July 30 in Science Advances.
Importantly, rewards given to monkeys didn’t provide reliable guidance to the animals about whether they had correctly ordered pairs of items. Monkeys instead worked out the approximate order of images in the list, and used that knowledge to make choices in experiments about which of two images from the list followed the other, Jensen’s group says.
Previous studies have suggested that a variety of animals, including monkeys, apes, pigeons, rats and crows, can discern the order of a list of items (SN: 7/5/08, p. 13). But debate persists about whether nonhuman creatures do so only with the prodding of rewards for correct responses or, at least sometimes, by consulting internal knowledge acquired about particular lists.
Jensen’s group designed experimental sessions in which four monkeys completed as many as 600 trials to determine the order of seven images in a list. Images included a hot air balloon, an ear of corn and a zebra. Monkeys couldn’t rely on rewards to guide their choices. In some sessions, animals usually received a larger reward for correctly identifying which of two images came later in the list and a smaller reward for an incorrect response. In other sessions, incorrect responses usually yielded a larger reward than correct responses. Rewards consisted of larger or smaller gulps of water delivered through tubes to the moderately thirsty primates.
[306 words]
[Time 5]
Monkeys consistently learned list orders in both reward conditions, making relatively few errors by the end of the sessions. Giving rewards for correct responses produced slightly faster list learning, the team found.
Jensen’s study adds to evidence suggesting that, like humans, monkeys can mentally link together pairs of items into lists that guide later choices, says psychologist Regina Paxton Gazes of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.
That’s probably a valuable ability in the wild, she says, because many animals need to monitor where group mates stand in the social pecking order. “An ability to construct, retain, manipulate and reference ordered information may be an evolutionarily ancient, efficient [mental] mechanism for keeping track of relationships between individuals,” she says.
[118 words]
Source: Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/monkeys-can-use-basic-logic-decipher-order-items-list?tgt=nr
TESS has found the first-ever ‘ultrahot Neptune’
BY LISA GROSSMAN 10:39AM, JULY 30, 2019
[Time 6]
Astronomers have spotted a new kind of planet: a Neptune-sized world sitting scorchingly close to its star. It could be in the midst of transforming from a hot, puffy gas giant to a naked rocky core, astronomer James Jenkins reported July 29 at the TESS Science Conference at MIT.
“This planet is amazing. It’s the first of its kind,” says astronomer Elisabeth Adams of the Planetary Science Institute, who is based in Somerville, Mass. Adams studies larger planets that orbit close to their stars, but wasn’t involved in the discovery.
The planet, called LTT 9779b, orbits a sunlike star about 260 light-years away. It was discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which launched in April 2018. Data collected by TESS show that the planet swings around its star once every 19 hours, putting it in a rare class of planets that orbit incredibly close to their stars.
Most other planets with such close orbits are either Earth-sized or Jupiter-sized and larger, said Jenkins, of the University of Chile in Santiago. But LTT 9779b is 4.6 times Earth’s size and 29.3 times Earth’s mass, placing it right in the middle of those extremes. Its proximity to its star should heat it to about 2000 kelvins (about 1725° Celsius), making it the first known ultrahot Neptune, Jenkins said.
One explanation for how close-in planets get cozy with their stars is that the worlds form farther away and migrate closer over time. A planet that had a thick, gaseous atmosphere might lose more and more of that gas the closer it comes to its star, as the heat evaporates the atmosphere or the star’s gravity steals the gas away.
[280 words]
[The Rest]
At about 2.5 million kilometers from its star, LTT 9779b may be about the closest a planet can physically get before the star gobbles up all of the atmosphere. If so, it could be a bridge between exoplanets called hot Jupiters, which are gas giants like Jupiter but have much closer-in orbits, and smaller, scorched rocky worlds, Jenkins suggested. The new planet is much smaller than a hot Jupiter, but still has a thick atmosphere that makes up about 9 percent of its mass, he said.
The next step is to measure how quickly LTT 9779b is losing mass, Adams says. If it’s rapid, that could explain why no other ultrahot Neptunes have been discovered: They shift from gas giant to rocky core too quickly. Finding one mid-transition may have been a stroke of luck.
[135 words]
Source: Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nasa-tess-first-ultrahot-neptune-exoplanet?tgt=nr
Part III: Obstacle
Virtual reality to solve minor personal problems
University of Barcelona | July 30, 2019
[Paraphrase 7]
A new study shows that conversation with oneself embodied as Dr. Sigmund Freud works better to improve people's mood, compared to just talking about your problems in a virtual conversation with pre-scripted comments. Researchers claimed that the method could be used by clinicians to help people dealing with minor personal problems.
People are often much better at giving useful advice to a friend in trouble than they are in dealing with their own problems. Although we typically have continuous internal dialogue, we are trapped inside our own way of thinking with our own history and point of view, and find it difficult to take an external perspective regarding our own problems. However, with friends, especially someone we know well, it is much easier to understand the bigger picture, and help them find a way through their problems.
A research team of the University of Barcelona (UB), IDIBAPS and Virtual BodyWorks, a spin-off of both institutions and ICREA, has used immersive virtual reality to observe the effects of talking to themselves as if they were another person, using virtual reality. Study results, published in the Nature Group's journal Scientific Reports, show that conversation with oneself embodied as Dr Sigmund Freud works better to improve people's mood, compared to just talking about your problems in a virtual conversation with pre-scripted comments. Researchers claimed that the method could be used by clinicians to help people dealing with minor personal problems.
The study was led by Mel Slater and Solène Neyret, researchers at the Experimental Virtual Environments Lab for Neuroscience and Technology (Event Lab), a research group of the Faculty of Psychology of the UB. Clinical psychologist Guillem Feixas, of the UB Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology and the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona (UBNeuro) also guided the study.
Changing perception and attitude thanks to Virtual Reality
Previous studies developed by this research team have shown that when we adopt a different body using virtual reality, we change our behaviour, attitude and perception of things. "We showed earlier that it is possible for people to talk to themselves as if they were another person, body swapping to two different avatars, and that participants' mood and happiness improved. However, we didn't know whether this was due to simply the participant talking about their problem or whether the virtual body swapping really made a difference," said Mel Slater, also a member of the UBNeuro.
In order to test the body swapping idea, researchers compared one group who talked to themselves first embodied as the participant and then body swapping to a virtual Sigmund Freud; and another (control) group who spoke to the virtual Freud, but in that case Freud responded with pre-scripted questions and comments (there was no body swapping).
Embodied as Sigmund Freud
For this technique to work out,researchers scanned the person to obtain an 'avatar' which is a 3D-likeness of the person. In virtual reality, when they look at themselves, at their body parts, or in a mirror, they will see a representation of themselves. When they move their real body, their virtual body will move in the same way and at the same time. Seated across the table is another virtual human, in the case of this experiment, a representation of Dr Sigmund Freud.
The participant can explain their personal problem to Dr Freud, and then switch to being embodied as Freud. Now, embodied as Freud, when they look down towards themselves, or in a mirror, they will see Freud's body rather than their own, and also this body will move in synchrony with their own movements. "They will see and hear their own likeness explaining the problem, and they see their virtual self as if this were another person. Now they themselves have become the 'friend' who is listening and trying to help," said Mel Slater.
While embodied as Freud, and after perceiving a strong likeness of themselves describing a problem, they can respond, as Freud, back to themselves and ask a question or help the person in front (themselves) to find a solution. After this, they are embodied once again in their own body and they can see and hear Freud's answer. Although it was really themselves who had spoken through Freud, they will hear their voice as disguised. They can keep switching back and forth between the two bodies, so having a conversation: in reality it is with themselves, but it appears as if it is between two different people.
Better results in dealing with personal problems
One week after the completion of the experiment more than 80% of participants in the body swapping group reported a change with respect to their problem, compared to less than 50% in the control group. "We found that those in the body swapping group got better knowledge, understanding, control, and new ideas about their problem compared to the control group (no body swapping)," said Mel Slater.
Participants were guided by clinical psychologist Tania Johnston about how to formulate their problem, so researchers do not know whether this method could be used without this prior clinical advice, and the extent to which the clinician could be incorporated into the virtual reality as part of the procedure.
However, researchers believe that this method could be a useful tool for clinicians. "Now that virtual reality is available as a consumer product, with high quality at less than the cost of a good Smartphone, this method could be widely used by clinicians, for example, by giving 'homework' to their clients to carry out this type of method at home,," said Mel Slater.
[930 words]
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ6cAVxQOwo&feature=youtu.be
Source: Science Daily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190730125325.htm
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发表于 2019-8-1 23:57:28
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